Timothy Creamer

Military career

Timothy Creamer earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Loyola College in 1982 and became a second lieutenant through ROTC. He then attended the U.S. Army Aviation School, graduating as the Distinguished Graduate in 1983. His early assignments with the 1st Armored Division included section leader, platoon leader, flight operations officer, and personnel staff officer for the 501st Attack Helicopter Battalion. In 1987, he took command of an air cavalry troop in the 17th Cavalry Regiment under the 82nd Airborne Division, later serving as personnel officer for the 82nd Aviation Brigade.

After completing a master’s in physics at MIT in 1992, he taught as an assistant professor in the U.S. Military Academy’s physics department. His military training includes the Parachutist Course, Jumpmaster Course, Combined Arms Services Staff School, and Command and General Staff College. Before being selected as an astronaut in 1998, he was a space operations officer with Army Space Command in Houston. He is now the Army's NASA Detachment commander.

NASA career

Creamer began working at NASA's Johnson Space Center in July 1995 as a Space Shuttle vehicle integration test engineer, handling engineering liaison for launch and landing operations and leading integrated tests for each Orbiter's systems. He directly supported eight Shuttle missions as a vehicle integration test team lead and coordinated information technologies for the Astronaut Office. Selected by NASA in June 1998, he started Astronaut Candidate Training in August 1998 and after two years of training was assigned technical duties in the Space Station Branch, focusing on command and control computers, office automation support computers, and the operational Local Area Network for all international partners and modules.

Starting March 2002 he headed the Hardware Integration Section of the Space Station Branch, ensuring proper integration of hardware configurations and operational aspects of future ISS hardware. In October 2004 he became the astronaut office representative for on-orbit information technologies. He then moved to the Robotics Branch, dealing with international partners on computer aspects of robotics operations, command and control software, and user interfaces, and was real-time support lead for Expedition 12 for robotics operations.

In September 2006 he served as an aquanaut during the NEEMO 11 mission, living and working underwater for seven days. In 2009 he was backup for Expedition 20 Flight Engineer Timothy Kopra, who launched toward the ISS on STS-127.

Expedition 22/23

Creamer was assigned to the prime crew of Expedition 22/Expedition 23 alongside Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Kotov and JAXA astronaut Soichi Noguchi. The trio launched onboard Soyuz TMA-17 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on 20 December 2009. They docked to the ISS two days later, joining Expedition 22 crew members Jeff Williams of NASA and Maksim Surayev of Roscosmos. Creamer also certified as a payload operations director in Huntsville, AL, helping to coordinate real-time operations of all ISS-based science events, the first flown astronaut to do so. On January 22, 2010, Creamer was the first astronaut to live tweet from space.

Flight director

On August 16, 2016, Creamer was the first astronaut to be certified as a flight director at NASA's Johnson Space Center.